News Archive
Best Science Books of 2019
December 07, 2019
Once again, John Dupuis and Joanne Manaster are back for another round of science book recommendations, just in time for your holiday shopping. This is a companion blog to the 7 December 2019 episode Give a Nerd a Gift: below is a list of the science books discussed, and links to them on Amazon. As usual, we've added our affilate tag to these links so if you buy something from Amazon because we sent you, we get a little kickback (usually $0.50). Enjoy!
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Joanne Manaster
- Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America by Christopher Leonard
- Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham
- Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
- The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko
- Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom by Katherine Eban
- Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness by Anne Harrington
- The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last by Azra Raza
- Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben
- This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West by Christopher Ketcham
- The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells
- The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
- Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death by Caitlin Doughty, illustrated by Dianné Ruz
- Math with Bad Drawings: Illuminating the Ideas That Shape Our Reality by Ben Orlin
- Change Is the Only Constant: The Wisdom of Calculus in a Madcap World by Ben Orlin
- Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
- Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane
- Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery by Christie Aschwanden
Not mentioned, but also recommended:
- Stronghold: One Man's Quest to Save the World's Wild Salmon by Tucker Malarkey
- When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon by Joshua Mezrich
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
- Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew by Michael Leinbach and Jonathan Ward
- The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
- Recursion: A Novel by Blake Crouch
- How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls: Animal Movement and the Robots of the Future by David Hu
- That Wild Country: An Epic Journey through the Past, Present, and Future of America's Public Lands by Mark Kenyon
- This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
- Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb
- The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir by Steffanie Strathdee, Thomas Patterson, Teresa Barker
- Full-Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest by Sandi Doughton
John Dupuis
- Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow
- The Patch: The People, Pipelines, and Politics of the Oil Sands by Chris Turner
- Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham
- Springtime in Chernobyl by Emmanuel Lepage
- The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb by Sam Kean
- The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt by Andrea Wulf, illustrated by Lillian Melcher
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
- Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben
- Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football by John Urschel and Louisa Thomas
- The Cartoon Guide to Calculus by Larry Gonick
- Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
- The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells
- The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption by Dahr Jamail
- Radicalized by Cory Doctorow
- The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in Its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future by Ben Green
- Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
- Why Trust Science? by Naomi Oreskes
- Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson
Not mentioned, but also recommended:
- Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America by Christopher Wylie
- Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again by Brittany Kaiser
- Einstein's Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum by Lee Smolin
- The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience by Lee McIntyre
- Maker Comics: Bake Like a Pro! by Falynn Koch
- Science Comics: Polar Bears: Survival on the Ice by Jason Viola, illustrated by Zack Giallongo
- Intuition by Allegra Goodman
- Bones Never Lie by Kathy Reichs
- Infinity War by Jim Starlin, illustrations by Ron Lim, Tom Raney, Angel Medina, and Shawn McManus
Rachelle Saunders
- Prosperity without Growth by Tim Jackson
- The Patch: The People, Pipelines, and Politics of the Oil Sands by Chris Turner
- Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham
- All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey by Betsy Mason and Greg Miller
- Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini
- The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors by Matthew Jackson
- Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
- Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness by Anne Harrington